Score: 3

"Very basic"

submission: Downhill Skiing

date: August 12, 2009

Well there's the framework for a decent game to be had here, but at the moment it's a very basic skiing game that has no point to it and never ends. You can just keep skiing, crashing into objects and passing through gates indefinitely without any kind of penalty.

Making it some kind of time trial, with extra time being added for passing through each gate, and obviously time being wasted each time you hit an obstacle would make this much more playable. Sound effects are also vital!

Score: 4

"Annoying"

submission: Star Huntress

date: August 12, 2009

Well, from the description in the author comments, the way this game is made was to run faster on newer computers. This might have been fine back in 2001, but now that 8 years have passed the speed of the game is incredibly fast, making it almost impossible to get past the boss character due to it's speed.

It's a shame, as this seems like a somewhat competent shooter, much in the vein of R-Type and the like.

Score: 0

"There's nothing here anymore"

submission: Virtual Driveby 2 (Final)

date: August 12, 2009

Well this is a dissapointment. The original flash apparently had some compatibility issues with the high score server, which led to a link being posted for the exe version of the game. Unfortunately this game is very old, and it seems that the link for the game is now VERY out of date and no longer works.

A shame, as the original version of Virtual Driveby was an interesting and moderately fun game considering it's age!

Score: 5

"Decent, but and OLD trick!"

submission: The Impossible Magic Tric

date: August 10, 2009

Well this trick is completely obvious to anyone over the age of 8, but it was still presented in a nice slick style. The music was decent enough, but didn't really feel "magical" like it could have. I did actually like having my name appear at the start too, that was a neat touch.

Overall, there is nothing spectacular here, just an old trick given a flash makeover.

Score: 6

"Amusing, but simplistic"

submission: Shrimps McGee

date: July 29, 2009

The music here is obviously fantastic, very catchy and a classic song. The humour too is also pretty great, the random idea of having a dancing shrimp telling us amusing facts. That's another thing, the "facts" here were pretty hysterical and absolutely ridiculous.

The animation side is where this is let down. It looks decent enough, but the fact that it is a 3 second loop of the shrimp doing the exact same dance is quite dissapointing. If he had been doing a wide range of dancing moves, pirrouettes and the like, it could have been funnier.

Overall, this is a good entry, which has room for much ore improvement.

Score: 7

"Great"

submission: Batman Lives

date: July 27, 2009

The style and tone of this was very dark and brooding, very fitting for a Batman entry. The gothic look of the buildings and whatnot was captured pretty much perfectly, and it was very reminiscient of the Batman cartoon of the early 90's in no small part thanks to the music. The music was, of course, fantastic as it is some moody stuff, easily some of the best Batman music ever (the competition isn't exactly fierce is it? Prince??!!??)

The humour here is great, it's pretty simple but works really well. If you had seen Batman lying in a heap on the ground, with a batarang stuck in him, it would probably have lost quite a bit of it's impact, so you made a good choice on keeping it focused on the skyline. It's good to see the normally faultless Batman make a complete ass out of himself, and very out of character too.

A great short coedy piece.

Score: 7

"Brilliant"

submission: The Human Snot

date: July 27, 2009

Whilst this is just a short entry, only 20 seconds long at most it manages to be pretty funny in such a timeframe.

The punchline here is pretty much to be expected, especially from something called The Human Snot, but the way he is built up as some kind of brilliant superhero with the booming voice and muscular body makes him seem like he COULD save people. Then of course, you see the reality and Johnny meets the train.

The animation here was ridiculously simple. but surprisingly works well with the entry. Overall, this is a great little joke, that could work in a variety of different situations, but repeating the punchline over and over would probably get stale quickly.

Brilliant 20 seconds

Score: 6

"Rough but solid!"

submission: My Brothers an Irishman!

date: July 27, 2009

It's a shame that there was no second part to this, as what was shown here showed some real promise.

The animation and graphics here are quite shoddy, but get the job jone amicably enough. Practice will obviously hone your drawing/animation skills, and the fact that this is quite an old entry tells me you probably have evolved quite a bit.

The audio here was what made this entry so good. All the voicework was surprisinglky good, even down to the little touches like having the telephone be a terrible human attempt at ringing. The accents were so bad, and acknowledges as such at the end, that they just made everything funnier.

Overall, this is a promising start, it's just a shae that the story was never continued...

Score: 9

"Mind-bending"

submission: Pilgrimage

date: July 27, 2009

Well there is no doubt about this, it's gonna give you a headache. What at first seems like a sub-standard platformer game quickly degenerates (and I mean that!) into something much deeper and thought-provoking.

The visuals here are never that great looking, with random glitches in the platforms and an overly bland look to everything. It should be clear to anyone that has played a Swain/Glaiel game before that this is not up to their usual high standards. And as the game progresses, it becomes apparent that this was a deliberate move on their part.

The way the game slowly devolves as you make your way though is really quite brilliant and works really well. The changes are subtle at first, with the audio becoming slightly more garbled and the graphics getting slightly more pixellated. Very quuickly though, you realise that something is up, and then things start devolving VERY quickly! By the end of the game, you are struggling to see what is happening onscreen, and the audio has become a garbled almost static-like mess.

The gameplay here is kind of reminiscient of Braid, with the games plot being revealed throughout the various signposts in the level. Humour occasionally seeps into this signs also, such as the one mentioning taking a detour to collect gold. Speaking of gold collection, this is a fairly tired cliche in platformer games, and seems fairly trite here also; added because this is a platform game, and all platform games need collectibles!

The medals here are pretty much standard fare, not being particularly difficult to get, apart from the Juxtaposition one, since enemies at the end of the game are damn near impoissible to see properly. Still, a lot of people probably just ran through the game, ignoring signposts and enemies to try and finish it, which is a shame as the game shows some real thought and attention under its rough exterior.

Great game, hidden away under a deliberately shoddy exterior.

Score: 6

"Very cheeky"

submission: Helen Keller the Game

date: July 26, 2009

I suppose I was expecting this when I clicked on the submission, but the 4.3MB file size had be for a few seconds too. This is a pretty funny joke, even if there isn't anything actually to it. Very good.